Because it’s a New Year I’ve made a few changes. Firstly, I’ve taken a few things off my website as I’ve just not been happy with how they turned out. I’ll work on them and they may make a comeback if I’m pleased with the results. Secondly, and more importantly, Flopsy now has a proper memorial website that you can view at flopsy.critters.com. I still need to add pictures and tweak pages but I intend to keep updating it as Anniversaries come along so expect updates in the future.

Finally I want to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I didn’t have a great 2009 so I hope that my 2010 is better (and the same to you also!). Thanks for reading.

A New Name
Previously this blog was called “The Suzi & Flopsy Blog!” I have no intention of not writing about my dearly departed friend, but I felt now was as good a time as any to change the name and have him mentioned in the tagline. This was probably the most difficult change (emotionally) for me to do.

Paypal Donate removed
Perhaps I’ll add it back in the future but it was listed as “Flopsy’s Food Fund” and I used to put donations towards buying him things mostly, and some towards the upkeep of the website. It’ll return if I can come up with a better description, but it might be better elsewhere anyway.

No more Friends Links
Along the side I used to have links to 4 friends blogs. The thing is, I have more than 4 friends, but I wasn’t going to link to private blogs or social networking pages like Facebook… Unless a lot more friends start personal blogs this might stay on the cutting room floor.

Twitter Updates
Last month I signed up for Twitter. Sometimes I have something to say, but it’s not much or important enough for a full blog post on here – Twitter is ideal for that. And yet, I still want anyone viewing this blog to know I’m still alive… Hence I have added my latest Twitterings to the side of the page.

Considering I haven’t altered my blog much at all in the past few months these added up to quite a few changes that I thought were worth writing about. Future changes might be added to the comments.

I initially wanted to see how much money I could get back from my website and the answer is “not a lot”, at least, not through that method. I’m not very keen on ads anyway and I really don’t receive the traffic to warrant having them so I’m just not going to bother.

I will keep the donation link available as I do sometimes get a bit of money here and there through it (and a huge thank you to those who have donated in the past!), and I will also keep referral links up as they are worth promoting, but the ads just need to go.

It wouldn’t be so bad if these emails were regular spam trying to sell me something, but unfortunately they’re all delivery failures because my email has been forged and has been spammed to at least the amount of addresses that bounced it back to me (known as backscatter). The good thing is that at least 58,750 emails failed to get through to whatever poor random person was on the receiving end, but the bad news is that plenty probably did get through. I can only hope that many realise it is rarely the person who owns the domain at fault.

Still, I feel terrible about it – perhaps more so because I had no idea until this morning. It seems that this started in the beginning of September and continued every few days until the middle of October when it suddenly stopped. If I’m lucky I won’t get a problem like that again, but I’ll have to make a continued effort to keep checking that account so it doesn’t needlessly eat up my webspace. *sigh*

I’m not sure what makes me more happy. Don’t get me wrong, I am extremely pleased that I don’t need to downgrade or that I won’t have to spend ages fixing broken links and getting people used to a new website address… But perhaps even better than that is the trust put into me by a relative stranger.

This is such a relief – one less thing to worry about for a little while.

Here is what I’ve facing starting with what my present host (Honest Networks) offers and then what my free host (Runbox Web Hosting) offers by comparison.

Honest Networks – Runbox Web Hosting
DirectAdmin Panel – cPanel
10,000MB space – 200MB space
150GB bandwidth – 4GB bandwidth
3 MySQL databases – 5 MySQL databases
$30 for 6 months – free with my email

They both have a lot of other features besides those listed, but these are the main ones I’m interested in and so have focused on.

In a way it seems obvious that I should stay with my present host because of the space and bandwidth I’m offered, but I really don’t use that much of it and, if I combined the free host with another free host (ironically owned by the company that own my present host) then I could get away with “sizing down”. I don’t really want to, but money is an issue right now. Then again, it’s a big inconvenience to haul everything from one place to another…

I guess I have a month to figure this out. *sigh*

As you may have noticed I now have a list of my last played songs located on (the right-hand side of my blog, my favourite tunes page) my Last.fm page. It updates every so often whenever I play a track on my computer which I think is pretty cool. It even allows some songs to be previewed through it!

Edit as of 28th, November 2007 – I updated the post to reflect the new place that my last played music can be found.
Edit as of 7th, July 2008 – I updated the post as now my Last.fm last played music is only available by clicking on the link which leads to my profile there.

It turns out someone had hacked into my forum and changed some of my files so they try and redirect you to another website, which in turn installs a virus on your computer. I’ve removed everything that was infected, but have to sort out the database connection issue which leads me to wonder if this is all worth it.

The previous forum I had was using phpBB and it was an upgrade that went horribly wrong that wiped that out. I started again with Simple Forums Machine after hearing how good it was, but I really don’t want to have to start again or sort out problems for something that got little use when I can work on something else.

And so I think I’m going to close the forum once and for all. I still have a private forum, a test forum and Horror 101 that I am Admin at as well as several forums I read on a regular basis… a forum discussing my website is taking up resources it doesn’t need to when I can post any updates on my blog. I feel somewhat sad to let it go, but I think all in all it’s for the best.

I hope the members of my forum understand why I have to do this. Thanks for keeping me company on there.

1. Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart And Sting – All For Love
2. Nelly Furtado – All Good Things (Come To An End)
3. Lasgo – Alone
4. Blaque – As If
5. Du Jour – Backdoor Lover
6. Meredith Brooks – Bitch
7. Seether ft. Amy Lee – Broken
8. Evanescence – Call Me When You’re Sober
9. Snow Patrol – Chocolate
10. Jennifer Paige – Crush
11. Ming Tea ft. Austin Powers – Daddy Wasn’t There
12. Nerina Pallot – Everybody’s Gone To War
13. Christina Aguilera – Genie In A Bottle
14. Daniel Bedingfield – Gotta Get Thru This
15. Chad Kroeger ft. Josey Scott – Hero
16. A-Ha – Hunting High And Low
17. George Harrison – I Got My Mind Set On You
18. Johnny Rzeznik – I’m Still Here
19. Alicia Keys – If I Ain’t Got You
20. Barenaked Ladies – If I Had A $1,000,000
21. The Rasmus – In The Shadows
22. Sixpence None The Richer – Kiss Me
23. Chris de Burgh – Lady In Red
24. Michael Jackson – Leave Me Alone
25. Anastacia – Left Outside Alone
26. Roxette – Listen To Your Heart
27. The Cardigans – Lovefool
28. Il Divo – Mama
29. Alien Ant Farm – Movies
30. INXS – Need You Tonight
31. Melanie C ft. Lisa Lopes – Never Be The Same Again
32. All Saints – Never Ever
33. Linkin Park & Jay-Z – Numb / Encore
34. Ashanti – Only U
35. K T Tunstall – Other Side Of The World
36. Nelly ft. Tim McGraw – Over And Over
37. Tasmin Archer – Sleeping Satellite
38. Erasure – Sometimes
39. Paris Hilton – Stars Are Blind
40. Weezer – Susanne
41. Billy Joel – The Longest Time
42. Jimmy Eat World – The Middle
43. Coldplay – The Scientist
44. Maroon 5 – This Love
45. MC Hammer – U Can’t Touch This
46. Ultravox – Vienna
47. Charles & Eddie – Would I Lie To You?
48. Prozzak – www.nevergetoveryou
49. Usher ft. Lil’ Jon and Ludacris – Yeah!
50. Shania Twain – You’re Still The One

Most importantly though, I’ve added a way for people to donate money (mentioned in a previous post) and advertisements so I can hopefully get a little something back. I have tried to make both elements as unobtrusive as possible so they are easy to ignore should you wish to, but they are there if you’re interested. The ad’s should become more suitable to my blog the longer they’re there for – please understand that this could take a while.

The next changes I will be making is adding a few more blog categories so topics that aren’t about me don’t go in the Suzi category. I just need to think up some suitable names and then I’m good to go!